Absorbent personal care articles such as sanitary napkins, panty liners and incontinence pads commonly utilize a pair of wings or flaps which are used to help secure the article in place to the wearer's undergarments. Generally, the wings are folded around the outside of the wearer's undergarment and either attach to the outside of the undergarment or to themselves via adhesive, mechanical fasteners or other fastening means. Once secured to the undergarment the wings help reduce the likelihood that the article will become dislodged and move out of position. Examples of such foldable wing fasteners are shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,876 Van Tilberg; EP051190B1 Pigneul; U.S. Pat. No. 5,401,268 Rodier; and EP1208823A1 Hohmann. In addition to securing the article to the wearer's undergarment, the wings or flaps are also designed to assist in the prevention of side leakage of body exudates received by the article. Unfortunately, it has been determined that these two functions can be at odds with one another.
One advantage of wings or flaps is the sense of security they provide to the wearer of the product that the product will stay in place. As a result, the users will often tighten the wings to an excessive degree. This in turn tends to pull the wings downwardly which is counterproductive to leakage protection as it distorts the intended flat or preferably upwardly curving nature of the product to a point that the lateral side edges start to curve downwardly which then facilitates run-off of body fluids that have been deposited onto the topsheet or body-contacting surface of the product.
Conversely, if the wing tension is reduced by not wrapping the wings as tightly about the crotch region of the undergarment, leakage protection will increase but at the expense of the secure feeling the wearer achieves by a tighter wrapping procedure. One possible solution is to increase the size of the wings. While this can increase protection against leaks, it also can cause the product to become more uncomfortable to wear. Yet another solution is to increase the overall dimensions of the base product by making it longer and/or wider. This can cause the product to become more uncomfortable to wear.
There is therefore a need for an improved product design that results in a product that allows the wearer to wrap the wings about varying sizes of undergarments worn by the wearer to the desired degree to provide the security that the product will remain in place during use and not shift during periods of increased activity. At the same time, there is also the need for a product that will still provide the necessary body-contacting surface area that would normally be provided at the side margins of product despite the wings being attached in a manner that causes a downward pull on the sides of the product.